This Machine

This Machine

This Machine Changes Lives!

Q:What do you do when a rash of teen suicides infects your old high school?

A: Start a charity that supports music programs there.

Q: What do you do when that charity starts to work and needs money to operate?

A: Throw an annual Rock n’ Roll carnival in your backyard with great music, comedy, and art and then invite everyone you know to come and hang and donate money.

Q: What do you do when the kids you’re supporting graduate from high school and your programs are successful?

A: Set up college scholarships and expand as fast as you can. Start spreading the music from coast to coast! Raise more money and buy more guitars!

That’s what this is. Since 2009, we’ve been providing underprivileged Nantucket high schoolers and middle schoolers with guitars and music instructors as a way to empower them to tell their stories in a safe space. Taking our cue from the kids, we quickly expanded to include drums, and occasional support for other music and arts programs. We now have Musack supported programs in LA, Compton, North Carolina, and even Haiti, all with huge support from our annual Rock n’ Roll Carnival backyard music festival featuring our talented musician and comedian friends. To Woody Guthrie, "This Machine Kills Fascists!" To us, "This Machine Makes Music Happen!" What is this machine to you?

Carnival Home

Carnival Home

How We Do It

We make music happen with support from people like you! But we like to have fun while doing it and enlist the help of our talented friends.

Every year we throw our own mini-Coachella, complete with bands, kids' activities, food, art, comedy, and a silent auction of rock n' roll memorabilia in a sprawling Los Angeles backyard.

Past years have seen acts like Weird Al, Polyphonic Spree, X, She and Him, Rancid, Horace and Lynval from The Specials, The Interrupters, Childish Gambino, Deltron 3030, DJ Shepard Fairey, Lisa Loeb, The Bird and the Bee, Jonathan Richman, and Fishbone... and that's just to name a few. Plus, Tim Armstrong has played in a tree.